Russel D Mclean

One of the extra-writing jobs I do on a freelance basis is slushpile reading for a few publishers. After a while you start to notice patterns in manuscripts, and one of the things I've noticed recently is a propensity to give character's body parts an odd level of autonomy, even in close POV.

For example:

His eyes looked at the table.

Her legs started sprinting across the street.

This is definitely a weird construction in any situation. Just trying saying that our loud and think about how it sounds. In most situations we know what body parts will do sprinting or looking, so all you're doing is filling empty space on the page; a huge sin.

Much easier to write:

He looked at the table

She sprinted across the street.

(Side note: there's no need to say "she started" unless something happened before she could really get going)

I think part of this is to do with thinking in terms of being specific - the author believes that they're somehow making things clear to the reader. But where is obvious to anyone (you don't have to be a scientist to know that a person hears with their ears) or its not about to lead to a big surprise (Her legs sprinted across the room - even after her upper body had been seperated from them by the killer's giant scythe) you don't need to be specific about what body parts are doing what; just what character is doing what.